Saturday was the big drive day traversing Spain to the north of Madrid. I didn’t get to prepare brilliantly for it. I’d had a very good dinner on Friday in the parador, carrot (lovely word in Spanish zahanoria) and orange soup followed by oxtail in crispy filo parcels with grilled aubergine, courgettes and peppers. Having only eaten a breakfast croissant and some crisps with a beer all day I was peckish and this went down very nicely with a glass or two of Ramon Bilbao rioja. I went and illustrated the blog, posted it and began to feel a bit nauseous. Not common for me at all. It settled and I went to bed but couldn’t sleep for ages and just as I was drifting off a mosquito whined by. Lights on, magazine at the ready but I couldn’t spot it. Brain clicks on in my doziness – I packed jungle formula for down south but why not here too? So I spray myself liberally and pull a sheet over my head. Eventually I hear no more mozzie and drift off for what can only have been an hour before the people two rooms along from me decide it’s time to check out – who checks out at 4 am unless you’re in an airport hotel? They have noisy children, lots of luggage and take ages. Fitful dozing follows until deep sleep at I guess around 7 – not what’s needed with a long day’s drive ahead. So I spring awake at 8:15 in a panic and am out and on the road by 8:40 only a bit later than intended. Just for the record Tortosa to Zamora by the non-toll route is 660 kilometres and I had wondered once or twice about the wisdom of doing it on my own.
E to D? Spain has two major rivers (well they might count the Quadalquivir in Andalusia too), the Ebro which flows east to the Mediterranean just downstream from Tortosa in the famous delta. The Duero flows west and becomes the Douro in Portugal before hitting the Atlantic – Zamora is the last major city on the Duero in Spain. I have once again selected the no toll road route – it’s also the shortest by 50 km. And it proved to be an oenological odyssey. It also gave me a theory about the colours of the Spanish flag – as they used to say on Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne: “The answer lies in the soil”. Few of you will recall these but they were very funny radio shows. The soil is either pale golden yellow or deep red throughout my journey today. The wine route bit? I started in the denomination Terra Alta which includes yesterday’s winery where, as in Penedes the day before, the vines are showing lots of green leaf. As I cross from Catalunya into Aragon we enter Cariñena and on into Calatayud. Here there are a few shoots but the fields are mostly low black vines. Much of the rest of Aragon seems devoted to grain production with fields displaying 30 cm shoots in the most wonderful variety of greens. Whether they are different seeds or just different stages I didn’t stop to ask – in fact I didn’t stop apart for breakfast so no pictures for this section – I’ll have to paint them with words. These greens range from bright lime green like euphorbia flowers, through emerald and forest through to a dark steely bluish green. I really did want to stop because these greens against the newly ploughed bright red fields looked amazing and went on and on. Sadly, although there wasn’t much traffic on the N234, the sides have very steep run offs to discourage the practice of stopping. Then we popped into Castile y Leon and Ribera de Duero right next door to the Rioja where there was no hint of a shoot. We’d just gone through a pass at 1060 km above sea level so even spring is quite chilly up here. One day I will go to Peñafiel the heart of Ribera de Deuro which has a massive castle and loads of great looking bodegas dotted beside the excellent CL116 – a truly great drive – must have been made by the Romans. There are a few stretches of road which are designated A11 – Autovia del Duero but lots of it has been started and looks like the money ran out. There are a lot of unfinished projects of all kinds that reflect the poor state of Spain’s economy but the ones the do finish are very impressive. Once into Valladolid province it’s all Rueda where the verdejo grapes produce their own fine wines and are shipped next door to make white riojas. Then once we cross into Zamora province it’s Toro made from its eponymous grape the vines of which are showing small shoots. Zamora of course also has its own DOC but I’m not sure I’ve tried it – maybe it would be rude not to.
I make it to the parador in time to set up the computer and listen to Watford at Leicester on Hornets Player but I have a premonition and the plethora of cafés in the sunny Plaza Mayor with the promise of a beer win out. I did keep an eye on the progress and was pleased to hear that the crowd were chanting Quique Sanchez Flores – oh that they would bring him back. Anyone but Mazzari next season please – no I don’t mean that. There’s a long list of managers we don’t want. 3-0 again conceding in extra time. Not good enough. 
By the way this parador is not a castle but the palace of the Dukes of Alba and Aliste – quite impressive though.
There’s a massive wedding on today so the normally elegant courtyard has an inflatable gonk bouncy castle. Well it keeps the kids out of the bar! Fortunately our favourite resident is still in place and I might take him for a ride around the ramparts tomorrow.
Zamora is a beautiful Romanesque town with the largest concentration of churches in that style in Europe. 24 of them all built in the 12th and 13th centuries – so that’s tomorrow’s photo blog. It’s due to be 27° so it might be shorts and sandals and a gentle walk about. Or inside several of them for a cool moment.
Right next to the parador is the Teatro Ramos Carrion which was a ruined hulk last time we were here. It’s been restored, had a modern extension added and created a new square with views over the Duero. It reopened to the public last year. There’s also another theme of these blogs that followed me to Zamora – the modernisme (oops that’s Catalan – modernismo) trail.
And given I ventured into hydrology on the Ebro in the last blog it’s worth noting that the Duero in Zamora also has a diagonal diverting weir to regulate the flow which you can spot along with the ruins of the first bridge dating from Roman times.
And now we’re out west another fascination for me is storks’ nests. They seem to like church towers in this shape (1) and it’s not often you get above one (2) at feeding time. This one (3) was just around the corner but they had to make do with the lower slopes of this glossy spire (4).
Zamora has one restaurant with a Michelin star and Dee and I dined here the last time we were here together celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary. Guess where I’m off to tonight!
The river bank walk reminded me very much of a similar stroll also beside the Ebro but way west in Haro in the Rioja. Elegant wooden fences, plenty of places to sit and picnic and the interesting contrast of the slow-moving Ebro and the rushing canal.
As I walked back through the village there was evidence that the citrus season is all but over although I did see another septuagenarian scrumping a few remaining oranges – to be fair he may have been legit. I didn’t like to ask. On my perambulations through the narrow streets I concluded that a third of the population was over 70, a third pregnant and the other third at work or in school. Back in the main square I discovered the reasons for the canal.
This marker up the side of the church shows the level of the floods – it’s ten metres at the top – that used to devastate the whole area because of the unpredictability of the flow in different seasons. So in 1857 they built a diagonal dam across the river – some evidence points to a much earlier Moorish effort to control the river – which siphoned large amounts into the canal which is used to supply towns and villages and irrigate the fertile lands of the area. A hydroelectric plant followed in 2002 so the waters of the Ebro are put to good effect.
That’s my history quota for the day so I set off for culture. The town of Horta de San Joan has a 
On the way I have an opportunity to snap one of the roundabouts I obsessed about the other day and a sign that I thought would amuse any of the IT buffs out there with its nifty digitalism. 
Of course after parking up and mounting the steps and steeps to Horta de San Joan I discover that the Picasso place only opens on Saturdays and Sundays – rubbish planning again. It also seems only to have reproductions and photographs of the mates he spent time with in Horta – might have been quite interesting but not essential, I think. After all that effort there was an attractive square with a bar with a beer with my name on. It was lunch time for the workers who are destroying the town centre before rebuilding it and they are all playing cards – quite competitively I would say.
Its Roman nature explained an odd bifurcation of a twin track section round a stone archway the Arc de Bera – I couldn’t stop but, thanks to Wikimedia Commons, I can show you what I saw. It was a sunny day, progress was good until a saw a signpost for San Sadurni d’Anoia. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the town but I’ve read it on lots of bottles of cava. San Sadurni is the capital of cava so a diversion seems essential.
I was tempted to continue my journey in this but security wouldn’t let me near it.
I also loved the chess set in the form of fingers which was Dali’s homage to Marcel Duchamp. In the attic is a great display of Gala’s sumptuous frock collection – it’s the era of frocks, OK.
It is a romantic and beautiful cove (below right) but just as I was about to settle for a beer on the front the rain started. It was nearly time for lunch so I went up to another favourite spot the Faro de San Sebastian. As the drizzle grew stronger we needed the lighthouse to be pointing inland. Now that place had changed – a local bar/restaurant has become a posh hotel with lots of weddings and corporate meetings it seems. Well it’s a great location on a good day and at least comfortable for a snack out of the rain.
Eventually it flattens out and I arrive at San Sadurni de L’Heura a totally unspoilt old village in which I saw no one on my perambulation – they were all out working in the fields or the chicken coops or indoors cooking and mending although I heard no sounds either.
Memories of Dee’s mum hit me then and I made for Sa Tuna where we took Eileen for a break after she’d lost Dee’s dad John. I began then to understand grief. Eileen was good company, very demanding of post boxes to send postcards, but had moments when she didn’t want to talk. This is the house we stayed in for a week.
Toroella is a special place as Dee and I walked to the castle – the nipple on the sleeping lady’s bosom. We phoned and waved to her sister lounging in the campsite far below. Quite a day!
That’s my room with my swimming trunks drying in the window. What do towers have? Lifts? No. Steps? Yes lots of steps – good for the fitness regime I tell myself as I pant to not quite the top. The view is magnificent. Worth it? If I survive two days without heart failure – yes. In fact we came to look at it many years ago when it was still under reconstruction by a Dutch couple who have done a great job in converting it to a boutique hotel.
The first four months of this year have been rather busy so after fulfilling Dee’s last wishes on her birthday by letting her fly free from the Ivinghoe Beacon, I thought it was time for me to fly away too for a while and catch up with me and my thoughts. Friends and family have been wonderfully supportive and made sure I didn’t sit doing a bottle of scotch every night or something equally daft and making sure that I had plenty of stimulating company, excursions and diversions. So I decided to take off for three weeks in May and where better to go than Spain which has meant so much to us both over the last twenty plus years. So here we go on a visit on my own to some of the places we had enjoyed together and see how it all stacks up.
So day 1 is nearing its end and my poor planning has been rescued by the fact that the hotel is a spectacular example of modernisme architecture, the town has a lot of fine houses in similar vein and I’m doing a hydrotherapy circuit tomorrow morning just like we did together with such delight in San Sebastian last August. A comparative report will follow.
It was last Christmas, 2015, when Dee opened an envelope containing her Christmas present which promised the Great Aurora Borealis hunt in February during a five-day trip to Iceland. Unfortunately, she was in the middle of chemotherapy again by the dates we intended to fly so we looked for the next best window to have a chance of catching the northern lights and it appeared that October would be best. We agonised throughout the year about whether we’d make it or not but we left Heathrow at one o’ clock on 12 October after a leisurely brunch in the lounge. At both ends the request for wheelchair assistance proved vital as not only were the distances considerable but when you are guided through the airport many queues are jumped, corners cut and arrival at the plane is so much easier. The flight was straightforward and we picked up our rental car via a shuttle bus with strict warnings about not driving on non-tarmacked road which might cause chips in the paintwork. There was also a brief discussion about football with our clerk being a Liverpool fan who was very pleased that Watford had just beaten Man United. He’d have been ecstatic if he’d known that in two weeks’ time Liverpool were to beat us 6-1! There was enough light for us to take in the volcanic landscapes as we headed towards Reykjavik’s ring road in order to head off east to our first hotel at Hella in the south of the island.
The hotel was well signposted and we checked in and were shown to a very pleasant room in the west wing of the log cabin like structure that was the Hotel Ranga. We unpacked, relaxed and then went to the bar for a beer and a cocktail. I was impressed by the range of craft beers – pale ale, red beer, wheat beers and stouts and Dee by the Icelandic vodka in her martini. Next morning we woke to appreciate the view over lawns with hot tubs and down to a river estuary.
Fortified with paracetamol Dee perked up as the journey progress including overriding SatNav’s instructions and taking us through the Reykjanesfólkvangur Natural Park the splendid scenery and rock formations of which were viewed from a granite chip road so a little trepidation there about the state of the paint work, unfounded thank goodness thanks to my unusually cautious driving.
Our room was great with windows in the pointed tower that stood at the corner of the building. It also had a shower module into which all you need was packed into a very small space – inspiration for our thoughts about building a downstairs loo and shower room at home. I went back down to find chaos at the car. I was in a bus pull-in preventing a bus with thirty Americans from checking in. Oops! There was a ticket on the windscreen too which the rental company forwarded to me later – it was for a tenner! I drove off sheepishly towards the street name on the rental agreement which proved deep into the eastern suburbs beyond the ring road. There was a large shop and warehouse strip but no signs for Thrifty. There was an automotive parts store so I asked in there and they said there were some bays marked with Thrifty in the car park and I should put it in one of those and put the keys through the letterbox of the Toyota dealership. I duly did this more in hope than conviction and then walked to a nearby filling station to see if they could recommend a number to get a taxi back into town. They called a friendly cabbie who was coming in to fill up anyway and within five minutes we were heading back into the centre. Taxi drivers the world over like to grumble it seems and he was bemoaning the growth of Reykjavik swallowing up surrounding small towns in its sprawl, encouraging foreigners to come and take all the jobs and stag and hens parties who always argued drunkenly about the fare. Might have been in London.
Next day over a coffee in a bar just across from the hotel with some ancient coffee grinding machinery as part of its decor, we decided the to take the Reykjavik City Bus tour to orientate ourselves. It didn’t take long and included as a highlight a visit to the bus depot from where we could obtain bus rides all over Iceland! Most impressive.
library about Icelandic literature and legends and family names. We retired to the hotel for lunch and to listen to Swansea v Watford on Hornets Player. Having taken all three points at Middlesbrough the previous week we had high hopes but when goalkeeper Gomes was named man of the match you know it wasn’t our day but a point is a point.
The sun taunted us again the next day. As we took off and banked over the Blue Lagoon the sun’s reflection flashed across it. We hadn’t got what we came for but neither of us had any regrets about making the trip. The landscapes were amazing and as an erstwhile geography teacher Dee was glad to have seen them. The people were friendly, the food was good and at last I was able to deliver last year’s Christmas present.
The route to our next stop the parador at Baiona took us very close to Santiago de Compostela so we couldn’t not go. We passed a few groups of walking pilgrims on the way but I think the preferred routes keep them off the major roads, fume flagellation not being part of the pilgrimage. As we approached the sprawling city we headed for the first car park we saw signs to and found that miraculously, well it is Santiago, it was right by a major intersection from which a gate led us to the centre in about fifteen minutes. However after the drive we needed to pause for a coffee and chose a place near this big junction where coach after coach disgorged its mixtures of pilgrims and day trippers.
We made our way into the old part of the city pausing at several haberdasheries to marvel at the lace, religious memorabilia shops to wonder at the gullibility and how many shapes you can make for a scallop shell, and some art and craft shops whose wares were interesting but not compelling. The cathedral is very impressive and the whole monumental area surrounding it gave a feeling of ancient power. We refrained from joining the queues to see the interior of the cathedral. It was hot, the queue was very long and we agreed some time ago that we didn’t like paying to go into churches.
We covered the immediate hinterland gazing at fine buildings with amazing carvings, wandered down narrow streets and found ourselves at the 
On the corner of the road back to the car was a restaurant called 
Our first impression as we arrived was that we had struck lucky. A beautiful sandy bay with a promenade lined with shops, bars and restaurants, a fishing harbour with a replica of Columbus’s ship Pinta which brought the first news of the New World to Baiona in 1943 – oh dear too used to typing my date of birth – 1493 was when the Pinta sailed in from the Americas. Columbus is starting to play as big a part in these blogs as Murakami – he’s followed us from one end of Spain to the other. At the end of the town was a promontory with the fortress walls surrounding it and the hotel right in the middle at the top. And you had to show your reservation to be allowed to drive through the entrance gateway at the foot – proper posh!
We dined that evening in the less formal restaurant just down from the main parador building called the Enxebre A Pinta as it overlooks the port with the replica ship. Less formal than the main dining room the food was well up to standard and made for a very relaxing last night in Spain – and we got another lovely sunset.
We packed and departed Cangas de Onis heading for Ribadesella at the mouth of the river Sella and which looked from the guidebook to be an interesting town with suitable locations for breakfast. The town divides neatly in two with the old town and fishing port on the right bank of the estuary and the modern resort with hotels and summer villas on the left. We headed for the port area and among the nets, lobster pots and boats we found the start of a Sunday market and a cute bakery that did great coffee and pastries. We’d missed by a month the famous 
The receptionist said that we should apply online and when the permits came back we should email them to the parador and they would print them for us. The website advises obtaining permits 30 days in advance so I make another trip to reception to see whether there’s any point and am advised that there’s an Urgent button on the site that should get us our permits today but that we should aim for tomorrow morning because of the tides – you can’t get onto the sand at high tide. Back to our room we get onto the site, make our application but have to send scans of our passports so it’s off to the business centre and a scanner. But wait cries Dee, we had scans on your laptop in Japan for occasions like this. Indeed we did and I haven’t deleted them so we attach the passport pics and hit send. A while later email permits pinged back but my emails didn’t reach reception for some reason the camera’s SD card was called into play and finally reception managed to print them.
I think in all I went up and down the stairs to reception about eight times. Thank goodness we were on the first floor and not up in the tower! During my many conversations at the front desk, the young lady suggested that the town of Meira would be worth a visit as the source of the Miño, Galicia’s longest river, which flows south and forms the border between Spain and Portugal which we would meet again later in the trip. It’s by now mid-morning and Meira’s about half an hour away so perfect timing for coffee and churros.
So hot I photographed the clock/temperature sign outside the town hall. Lugo is a very clean and pleasant town with a black eagle statue commemorating the capture of the city by the Romans in the first century BC, a great market hall, the huge baroque town hall and many other marvellous buildings. A shady lunch spot was discovered on our travels and we sat to indulge in pulpo gallego, baked clams and a few other tasty tapas all helped down with very crisp Albariño wine from nearby. We hadn’t intended to do city sightseeing this trip – more mountains and beaches was the agenda – but Lugo was a delightful detour. Exhausted by the heat, lunch and walking we drove back to the hotel for a shower and a lie down. Later a drink and a few tapas and an early night ahead of tomorrow’s trip to the beach.
We also decided to carry on past Santander although people have said it’s a great city but we were drawn to the touristy attractions of Santillana del Mar once described by Jean Paul Sartre as the prettiest village in Spain.
We were surprised to learn that they make two types of cabrales – one just with cows’ milk and the other with a blend of cows’, goats’ and ewes’ milk. They are all controlled by strict Denominacion Cabrales regulations and are quite powerful blue cheeses. I marginally preferred the three-milk blend but both were highly acceptable.
Originally raised grain stores to prevent rats and other rodents getting at the grain, some are still used for this purpose, others as garages but they are interesting structures found all across Asturias and Galicia. The village also had one shop-cum-bar and even with gentle strolling a thirst had developed so a beer was called for. We went back to the parador for a light lunch and found elaborate preparations for a wedding in full swing. We were later able to observe the guests from the balcony of our new, perfectly adequate room. A taxi took us back into Cangas for dinner and there beside our table in El Campanu was a photo of the owner with none other than Martin Berasategui who clearly approved our choice of local restaurant. Apparently he still spends quite a lot of time travelling to sample authentic local cuisine all over the country.
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